


i'm fine cause i know you're mine

by juggyjones



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friends to Lovers, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 16:49:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17247848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggyjones/pseuds/juggyjones
Summary: Clarke and Bellamy have been YouTubers for quite a long time. Clarke and Bellamy have also been dating for quite some time.But their viewers don’t know that.Not that Clarke and Bellamy are reallyhidingit.





	i'm fine cause i know you're mine

**Author's Note:**

> title from _mine_ by the 1975. lowkey inspired by youtubers alyssa and tanner.
> 
> i was literally racing against time to finish this before the end of 2018, with 9 mins to spare so yikes if there's typos

When Clarke and Bellamy first start hanging out, it comes as no surprise to anyone. She’s a sophomore at Arkadia High and he’s a senior, but even despite the age difference, they have one very specific thing in common – they are two YouTubers on the rise in a fairly small town.

He’s the one who approaches her, at first. She’s sitting in the cafeteria with Raven, Luna, and Harper, and he’s passing by with some of his friends when he stops at their table.

‘Hey, Griffin.’

Clarke turns her head to face him, and she’s practically awestruck.

The thing with Bellamy Blake is that everyone knows he has a YouTube channel and around these parts, that makes him a star of sorts. He’s by no means a popular as a broad term, but Ark High is not a big school and Arkadia is not a big town, so here, he’s the closest thing to a popular high school student they’ll get.

He’s also attractive. On his videos, goofy and dorky, too, and nerdy sometimes, but smart and intelligent, and with those black locks of his, it would be a lie to say that Clarke doesn’t have a celebrity crush on him.

A slight one. It’s a crush nonetheless.

‘Hey.’

‘I watched some of your videos the other day,’ says Bellamy. He’s smiling at her, the tips of his fingers resting at her table. ‘They’re really good.’

Clarke is almost too surprised to smile back, but she does. She even manages to say ‘Thanks,’ and she’s proud of herself.

Bellamy brings the hand form the table into a thumbs up. ‘Keep doing that.’

And walks away.

It takes Clarke about several long moments to wrap her head around what just happened. Bellamy isn’t only popular because of his YouTube channel, far from that – his channel is popular because he is hot, intelligent and the kind of jock that doesn’t seem possible to be real. Clarke, on the other hand, isn’t unpopular – but she’s a sophomore, who spends most of her time hanging out with her friends and doesn’t really do parties, even though she goes to the football games. Most people don’t know about her channel, even though she isn’t trying to hide it.

Somehow, the fact that _Bellamy_ watched and liked her videos inspires her to try even harder at the YouTube game. Her next video is better than the previous one, and she even gets a new camera and an external microphone, and within two months there’s a light in her bedroom and she’s getting more and more views. Occasionally, Bellamy leaves a comment, and she does the same on his videos.

Often, when Raven confronts her about the fact that she started truly caring about her YouTube channel only _after_ she realized Bellamy Blake was a viewer, she denies it.

‘It’s not about Bellamy,’ she’d say. ‘Not really.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Okay, listen. Sure, kind of, knowing that Bellamy likes the channel meant something but not in the way you think.’ It’s one of the times when Raven is featured in one of her videos and there’s a camera in front of them, filming. Clarke knows she’ll see this when editing the footage and it makes her a little nauseous. ‘He’s the first person to actually acknowledge that they watch my channel.’

Raven coughs. ‘Luna and Harper don’t count as people? I’m a bird?’

‘That’s not what I meant! People who aren’t my close friends. Who I have nothing to do with.’

‘Well, I guess. It’s a fair point.’

‘Thanks.’

Raven leans towards Clarke’s laptop that’s open with a script of things they need to do—yes, Clarke scripts the general gist of her videos because otherwise she’s in no way capable of remembering what she wanted to say or do—and opens her YouTube channel. She doesn’t stop at that; soon after there’s about five tabs open, all different videos of Clarke’s. She scrolls down to the comments of the most recent one.

‘What do you see?’

It’s Bellamy’s comment. ‘ _You managed to make Arkadia seem a lot better than it actually is! Different perspectives mean the world_ , smiley face,’ she reads out loud.

‘Right.’ Raven shifts to a different tab, scrolls down to the comments. ‘What about this one?’

‘ _Just wanted to let you know Octavia found this tutorial and now I had to go buy her an eyeshadow palette. At least she doesn’t want to be a warrior princess anymore!’_ Clarke reads again. ‘What’s your point?’

Raven closes all tabs they don’t need and leans back on the bed, sitting back next to Clarke. ‘I’m saying he might have a thing for you.’

‘He doesn’t.’

‘Clarke. He comments on your every video.’

‘They’re not flirty comments!’

‘Sure.’

‘Yeah.’

It stops at that and Clarke is happy Raven let it be, because she doesn’t really know how the rest of the conversation would have possibly gone. One of her best friend’s specialties is that she can get everything out of people, even the things they aren’t aware of – and Clarke fears, deep down, that there’s something about the older Blake she is trying very hard not to be aware of.

Throughout the year, as Clarke’s videos get more creative, more well-produced, just _better_ in general, so do Bellamy’s. It’s not long after Christmas that he reaches the one hundred thousand subscribers mark and gets verified, and a few days later, she reaches her fifty thousand. They congratulate each other, as it should be, and keep leaving comments on each other’s videos. People start noticing it, replying to their comments, and before they know it, they’re bringing traffic to one another.

Several weeks before their spring break, during one of the times when she and Bellamy walk half-way together after classes, she realizes that somewhere along the line, they became friends. She can’t pinpoint the exact moment; there were smiles and nods in the hallway, at first, ever since their conversation. Sometime around Thanksgiving, it turned into short chats, and after Christmas, they walked together for the first time. After his games, whenever Clarke would tag along with Raven to a party, they’d gravitate towards each other. It wouldn’t be a rare sight to see her in his car after one of those, as he tended to leave earlier because he needed to look after his sister, and she isn’t exactly a party person. That transferred into him picking her up if he’s driving, or walking with her if he’s not.

When spring break arrives, they film their first collab – exam survival tips on Clarke’s, and a workout/nutrition routine for Bellamy’s (as Clarke knows something about that because of her mother’s medical profession). It garners quite some attention, even from people they don’t know, and their numbers start going up quickly.

Raven says it’s their chemistry at work.

Bellamy graduates and that summer, they go on a trip and they vlog it. Clarke’s content starts shifting towards art and crafts and trying to lead a creative and free life while being a high school student.

‘Hippy,’ as Luna would say, ‘you’re turning into a hippy.’

Her videos feature more of Luna and a bit less of Raven, and Harper makes an occasional appearance now, with Bellamy mostly being in the back of Clarke’s vlog sections of her videos. Bellamy’s content shifts more towards vlogs and him trying out to figure out how to balance looking after his sister when his mother works long hours.

He goes to University of Arkadia and they stay close. Octavia starts high school and at that point, Clarke is pretty much friends with her. She sees Bellamy several days a week and they still film together almost all the time, not even on purpose.

Boyfriends and girlfriends come and go, but none of them are ever shown in Clarke’s videos. In Bellamy’s, there are occasional sights of Echo or Roma or Gina, but that’s it – he never shows Finn, when Clarke asks him not to. He doesn’t show Niylah, Clarke’s short-term thing during her first semester at Uni of Arkadia, nor Lexa, when they date almost until the beginning of her second year.

Clarke breaks up with her because there’s something about her relationship with Bellamy that has been changing for a while and Lexa doesn’t like it.

They’re sitting in Clarke’s dorm room, on her bed. Lexa is looking away from her and no matter how hard Clarke tries, she can’t get the brunette to show her face.

‘You spend more time with him than you do with me,’ says Lexa.

‘He’s my best friend. We do the same thing for a living. It’s – it’s a job, as well.’ It doesn’t feel like a job, but she has to explain herself _somehow_.

But as Lexa keeps talking about Clarke not being close enough to her, and that they’re drifting apart, and that she doesn’t really know where they stand anymore, Clarke realizes that she doesn’t _need_ to explain herself to someone. If Lexa doesn’t understand Bellamy’s importance in her life, that’s all Clarke needs.

‘Maybe this just isn’t about Bellamy at all,’ she says. ‘Maybe we’re just not working out.’

Lexa faces her, finally, and her lips are pressed into a thin line – otherwise, there is nothing on her face that would indicate her being upset. ‘You’re just looking for excuses.’

‘Well, what’s your hot take on the whole thing?’

‘I don’t know. But I feel like you’d rather be with him than with me.’

They both know what she means by those words: being with him as in physically spending time with him. But as their relationship deteriorates, Clarke’s mind keeps going back to this conversation and Lexa’s words start bearing a different meaning.

It’s sometime in October, four years since they started talking, that Clarke tells Bellamy how she feels. It’s not a big ordeal – they’re cooking lunch in Bellamy’s kitchen and he’s vlogging, when they touch the topic.

‘Clarke, do you read comments on our videos?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Have you noticed that lately, the amount of comments saying that we should start dating has increased?’

Clarke laughs, and shakes her head, because no, she actually hasn’t.

Stirring the homemade white sauce, she kind of leans away fro the camera, biting the insides of her cheeks. Then, in a moment of pure courage, she doesn’t even look at Bellamy when she says: ‘But, you know, I can’t really disagree.’

His laughter echoes for as long as it takes him to realize that she said she _doesn’t_ disagree. He doesn’t lower his camera that’s pointed at her, though, only stares at her with a confused look on his face.

The patented confused puppy look all the Blakes can do, but he does the best.

‘I don’t think I got the joke. Or the reference.’

Clarke smiles at him. ‘I wasn’t joking. I like you. I do think we should give dating a try.’

‘Huh.’

‘Yeah. What are your thoughts on this?’

‘I don’t know. What are my thoughts on this?’

‘Well…’ Clarke turns off the heat and pours the sauce over the meat, stirring lightly again. She turns her back ot their dinner-in-the-making and leans against the counter. ‘I think you don’t disagree, either.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I never really thought about it.’

Bellamy sets the camera on the table, but it’s still on and it’s still pointed at her – not that she minds. For the past five or so years, the camera has been one of her best friends. Another one of them, the boy in question, still has the confused look on his face. She feels good about the whole situation, though; his shoulders are a little tense and he’s still a little scrawny because college football isn’t really for him and it’s taking him ages to grow into his height, but he doesn’t look nervous.

‘Lies. You’re just scared,’ she tells him.

‘Of?’

‘Giving this a try. Getting hurt. Attachment.’

‘All of that?’

‘And more.’

‘You seem pretty certain about this.’

‘Bellamy,’ says Clarke, ‘if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be saying all of this.’ He doesn’t say anything, so she stirs the pot again, and steps away from the cooker. Closer to him. ‘Do you trust me?’

He gulps, but nods.

Clarke closes the distance between them. Hands on his cheeks, she places a kiss on his lips.

When Bellamy wraps his hands around her waist and pulls her closer, it’s the start of something everyone and no one expected. Nearly nothing changes, bar the kissing and the sex and the coupley things. They stick to their rule of no significant others in front of the camera, so they never clarify that there has been a change in their relationship status. Their viewers simply assume they’re dating people off camera, and some assume they’re dating each other, but the common reaction is ‘no, they would’ve told us’.

They keep this up for the next three years. Even when they move in together after Clarke graduated, they don’t say anything.

‘We’re not really keeping this a secret, at all,’ Clarke tells Raven one time she comes over.

‘Then how do you explain it?’

‘We’re just not… I’d say the word is “affectionate”. Not on camera, I mean. It’s the only thing that changed, and we hugged and kissed each other’s cheeks before we got together, and everything people see on our channels is the same.’

‘But you’re still keeping this from your viewers.’

‘We’re not keeping it from them!’ argues Clarke. ‘We just don’t have the need to point it out.’

‘Clarke,’ Raven says, ‘you have over two million subscribers, and Bellamy has over four. Your _joint_ second channel has nearly a million. That’s arguably around five million people watching you.’

‘You’re just trying to make me feel guilty about this.’

‘Well, like it or not, you’ve been keeping this from people for three years now. You’re both getting bigger, and it’s gonna get out. You either want to be in control in how that happens or suffer the consequences when it comes as a surprise.’

Raven’s words get stuck in Clarke’s head so about two weeks later, she tells Bellamy about them. They spend the next two weeks compiling all the videos they have of each other that are unseen by their viewers – videos that show they’re more than just friends.

It’s Bellamy’s job to assemble the footage, so Clarke only sees it when it’s posted.

‘Do you trust me?’ he asks before publishing it without her supervision.

Clarke kisses him. It’s a statement in itself.

He hands her a pair of earphones and she cuddles up next to him, with his laptop on her lap. When she presses play, the video is still at zero views.

It begins with The 1975's  _Mine_ fading in with a black background, softly. With the first note of the piano there is a clip of Clarke’s face from the clip they never published – the one where she tells him how she feels about him. This is before that, and she’s smiling at something he said, and it makes her realize how far they’ve come so much she nearly begins crying at that moment. Several seconds in, it’s _their_ song playing, slowed down, and she can’t take it.

Bellamy grips her tigher, pulls her closer to his chest. She can feel his heart beating, but the video is all she can focus on.

For the majority of it, it’s the footage of either one of them. There’s some Clarke has never seen, or has forgotten about; there are videos of when they were kids, which she’s certain he’s taken from Wells or her parents. There are bits and pieces of their lives that she never paid a lot of attention to, like the painting she made in her senior year that Bellamy hung up on his dorm room wall; a smudge on a wall in their new house from when he accidentally missed a brush and touched the wall with paint on his fingers. There are bits and pieces of their life that make it a _life_ , and not just a show for their viewers, and it makes Clarke cry.

Bellamy just holds her.

She’s in love with him, and he’s in love with her, too. If there are ever moments when she doubts either of those, this is the video that will remind her that there’s no way it couldn’t be true. This is an art for the two of them – this is how they decided to represent their relationship to the world. It’s soft and vulnerable and feels like a song, or a butterfly’s touch, or a baby’s smile. It feels effervescent and beautiful and surreal.

When the music stops and it’s a song she’s never heard, but very clearly Bellamy singing, she starts almost sobbing. Bellamy presses a kiss to her temple, but doesn’t say anything.

‘When we decided to do this, to present the three years of our relationship to our viewers, I knew exactly how to do this. It’s been eight years now since we met, since we became friends – and those have been the eight best years of my life.’

The tone of the videos changes. It shows Clarke alone, mostly, painting or singing or reading or cooking or doing anything else she does off camera. If Bellamy’s in the footage, it’s scarce, and the sole focus is on her – on what she looks like in his eyes.

She has to blink, rapidly, to usher the tears from blurring her vision.

‘When I told her I liked her videos, I had a crush on her. I was a fan. I didn’t know she had a crush on me, too. We went through a lot in the next five years, but no matter what happened, we stayed together. When she told me she likes me, she knew better than I did that I liked her just as much.’

‘There’s a lot I could say about her, but I think that she’s the kind of beautiful I couldn’t do justice. You can’t put in words something you see every day, because you don’t notice how good you have it. I know I love her. I know why I do, too, and it’s because the person you see in this is who Clarke truly is. She’s even better in person than she presents herself on YouTube.’

‘So, now I think you know how I feel about her. And Clarke, in case you don’t—’

Bellamy’s voice cuts off and the video goes black. She holds her breath, involuntarily – then it’s a clip of him, grinning at the camera, and looking down as he writes something on a piece of paper. He holds it up and it takes the camera a few moments to focus, but when it does, his voice is back — ‘Will you marry me?’

The video cuts off and she takes her earbuds out, turning around.

‘I love you,’ she says.

Bellamy smiles. Bites her lip; nervous.

‘And yes, I’ll marry you.’

He laughs the heavenly laugh, as if a heavy burden is off his chest, and kisses her like never before. He takes a ring from somewhere and puts it on her ring finger and _god_ , she’s never been happier.

Needless to say, almost none of their viewers are very surprised when they get married two years later, at the anniversary of their ten years of being friends.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is my second bellarke fic in a month where bellamy ends up proposing in a slightly odd way. oops.


End file.
